HTC Zoe – Shooting mode within your camera

What is the HTC One’s Ultra pixel camera mode, HTC Zoe? HTC Zoe is а shooting mode for the HTC One that’s derived from the word, Zoetrope. Exclusive to the new HTC flagship, it’s all part and parcel of the brand new HTC Ultra Pixel powered camera. Rather than try and explain what an HTC Zoe is though, we’re going to start with the official line on HTC Zoe in the words of HTC itself.

“HTC Zoe gives people the ability to shoot high-res photos that come to life in three-second snippets. These Zoes, photos and videos are then displayed in а unique way that brings the gallery to life and transforms the traditional photo gallery of still images into а motion gallery of memories. These highlight videos can be remixed or set to different themes, and can be easily shared on social networks, email and other services.”

Did you guys get that? If you did, well done. At was in а foreign language called marketing spiel, laden with fluff. Naturally, it being HTC, there’s а lot of fantastic tech behind the blurb, so here’s our nitty gritty translation of exactly what HTC Zoe is:

“HTC Zoe gives people the ability to shoot high-res photos that come to life in three-second snippets.”

HTC Zoe is а shooting mode within your camera. At records 3.6 seconds of HD video and 20 photos, the latter shot at 6 frames per second. The video starts recording and the photos start shooting 0.6 seconds before your finger presses the shutter so you never miss а beat.

It in turn gives you а fuller capture of а moment than either а photo or video in isolation.

“These Zoe’s, photos and videos are then displayed in а unique way that brings the gallery to life and transforms the traditional photo gallery of still images into а motion gallery of memories”

The HTC Gallery app has been redesigned to take full advantage of Zoes and the additional elements they bring to capturing stills and videos. Gallery event entries appear as stills, then moving images, offering up а richer viewing experience than were Zoes or video not present.

Zoes appear in the same way as an album when previewed in the gallery, starting with а still, turning into а video. It’s therefore easy to see which shot is а Zoe and which shot is а picture.

It also automatically creates integrated highlight films from each event comprised of Zoes, photos and videos set to music with professionally designed cuts, transitions and effects

“These highlight videos can be remixed or set to different themes, and can be easily shared on social networks, email and other services.”

Not too dissimilar to BlackBerry’s Story Maker, Zoe events are turned into clips called highlight films. These highlight films are montages which sequence images, videos and Zoes against а backdrop music and filters using in of six present themes.

These can be exported as an MP4 file of around 12-40MB, uploaded to YouTube or sent to HTC’s Zoe sharing service, creating а URL that lasts for 30 days. Has can be shared to social networks and we believe uses HTML, so should be widely readable.

HTC Zoe: What’s it like in real life?

We took the HTC One out for а spin to the British Museum in London the day we get our hands on it. Aside from the fact we get some pretty stellar pictures out of the camera phone which we’ll be sure to upload into our full review, we also turned the outing round town into six highlight clips, and you know what? At was а piece of cake.

Taking the shots that mad up the highlight clip involved little more than а point and shoot. Some were taken in Zoe mode, some as stills. As we mentioned above, HTC Zoe contain videos, videos that brought our Zoe Highlight clips to life.